


I bet on losing dogs

by queermccoy



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Come Marking, Dacryphilia, Dom/sub Undertones, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Friends With Benefits, Friendship, Hand Jobs, M/M, Making Out, Situational Humiliation, Stanley Uris Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:41:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23515594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queermccoy/pseuds/queermccoy
Summary: “Hey, Richie?” Stan asks, and he doesn’t look away from the clear skies but motions with his hands for Stan to continue. “Was that a closet? Behind the Very Scary door?”Richie says, resigned, “Yeah.”Stan laughs and so does Bev. Mike lets out a weird giggle and Richie can’t see him but he sounds almost embarrassed.“Clown has jokes,” Richie says. His fingers dig into the grit of the road.“Had jokes,” Ben says. Richie closes his eyes against the bright sun and sees the red outline of his eyelids, veins threading his vision.It’s silent. Someone is still crying. Richie is surprised to discover that it’s him, that he’s the one crying.or, Richie is Stan's hall pass.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris, Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris
Comments: 41
Kudos: 204





	I bet on losing dogs

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be a fun romp where Stan fucks Richie, but it really turned into a study of the Loser's friendship through Richie and his insecurities but also Stan fucks Richie. I love these people and I love their love. Title from I Bet on Losing Dogs by Mitski.

Richie is buzzing. He is two, no three, drinks in and their waitress has just delivered the shot he ordered. 

He looks at the shot, the Losers, and back at the shot again. No one is looking at him and he wants them all to see this so he says, “Watch this!” and waits for all six sets of eyes to turn his way before he performs. 

Bending at the waist, hands in his lap, Richie wraps his lips around the glass. He tosses his head back and gives a really good show. Clear liquid spills, dripping out of his mouth. 

When Richie brings his head back down, the glass falling into his drink, his eyes land on Eddie. He’s about to ask, very subtle, very cool, about his marriage (how strong is it, can I ruin it for you) when Stan makes a strangled noise to Richie’s left. 

Richie looks down, and he has to with Stan, who never grew again after Junior year apparently. 

Stan is glaring at him. His mouth is set in an angry, unmoving line and he clenches his fists, one on each knee. 

He’s been like this all evening, just bitchy and passive aggressive and straight up rude, but only to Richie. He won’t really meet his eye or back up his jokes or anything. Richie and Bill made eye contact about it earlier, before the food even arrived, but no one has said anything about it. Richie still doesn’t remember a lot from their shared childhoods, but he definitely remembers that Stan is like a hornets nest— best when unprovoked. 

Now though, with Vodka clinging to his lips and two and a half weak beers in his blood, Richie feels stupid enough to say, “What the fuck is your problem tonight, Stan-ley?” 

“I don’t have a problem, Richie,” Stan insists through clenched teeth. He turns and glares at the table instead of at Richie, but that isn’t much better. “What’s your deal anyway, with the blowjob shot?” 

Richie blinks, startled that Stan knows the name of the party trick Richie learned when he was young, dumb, and trying to fill himself with college track star come. 

“There’s no deal,” he says, a little panicked behind the eyes. He hopes no one notices. 

Behind Stan, Eddie chuckles nervously and across the table, Mike sits with his chin in his hand, watching. 

“So you didn’t just bend down and demonstrate an almost perfect blowjob shot, just now?” Stan asks, hands somehow clenching tighter. His knuckles are pale and strained.

“Almost perfect?” Richie sputters with faked outrage. “Almost perfect?” 

“Yes,” Stan sounds louder now, but maybe that’s because he’s moved in closer. “‘Almost perfect,’ as a description of your execution was generous; it was mediocre at best.” 

On Richie’s other side, Bev let’s out a small gasp. Richie looks at her out of the corner of his eye and sees her mirroring Mike, chin in hand, watching this unfold. Richie wishes they would stop but cannot deny his audience. 

“Here,” Richie plucks the shot Bev had ordered but not taken from beside her plate and deposits it in front of Stan with a flourish. “Show me how it’s done.” 

Stan glares at him some more, his eyes burning holes in Richie’s resolve. Maybe he has pushed it too far. No one has beeped at him, but he’s being such an asshole, even he can see it. He doesn’t back down though, just taps the rim of the glass with his index finger and smirks. 

“If you can’t do—” Richie starts to say, but his taunt dies in his throat when Stan bends down and takes the glass into his mouth. His execution is flawless and leaves Richie red in the face. He looks at the other Losers frantically, desperate to confirm that what he’s seeing is real. 

Mike looks almost queasy, chin no longer in his hand. He’s blushing, cheeks and ears as red as Richie feels. Bev is laughing and so is Bill, but Ben has his eyes averted, like he’s trying not to see something he shouldn’t in a locker room. 

Eddie’s eyes are wide and glued to Stan, to his neck thrown back. Richie can see him in the periphery of his vision, but he isn’t really paying attention because Stan’s curls just fell off his forehead and they look so soft and sweet. Richie wants to touch Stan, sink his hands into his hair and mess it up. 

Stan drops the glass into an outstretched hand before gently placing it back down on the table. He slides it forward with his index and middle fingers until it’s lined up next to Richie’s beer glass and the shot inside. 

“My problem is,” he says, making eye contact with Richie in a way that feels hostile, threatening.“That you are my hall pass.” 

Richie blinks and the whole table erupts. 

Bev and Mike are laughing, full body, rolling out of their chairs laughing. Ben’s mouth falls open and his genuine surprise is cute. Bill has his head in his hands, looking at Stan like he’s embarrassed for him, which Richie gets because he would be embarrassed to admit that he wanted to fuck someone who looks like him too. Eddie is yelling at Bev and Mike to be respectful but shaking his finger at Stan and demanding answers at the same time. It’s chaos, it’s madness, and through it all Stan raises an eyebrow at Richie and looks right through him. He always could. 

“Anyone else want to admit that they want this hot bod?” Richie asks, gesturing to his soft belly and flapping at hand at his shaggy hair dramatically. 

No one says anything. Richie smiles because of course it is. 

“Stan, _why_?” Eddie asks, tipping forward and leaning against the table. He’s trying to get Stan to meet his eyes, but he won’t stop looking at Richie. 

Stan shrugs. It’s a very precise gesture and it matches the way he primly brushes imaginary dust off his pant legs, hands coming to rest on his knees. 

When Richie was a kid, he’d had sexual fantasies about pretty much every boy who was nice to him and some who weren’t. Eddie was a frequent flyer, because of Richie’s years long crush, but Stan wasn’t exactly on a milk carton in his mind’s garbage jerk off pile. He’s short, he’s pretty, and Richie likes the way he picks him apart with his eyes alone, making him feel like he’s taking up too much space and not nearly enough at the same time. The addition of glasses perched on his thin nose, eyes assessing over their wired rims, only adds fuel to Richie’s fire. 

“It’s the pheromones, Eds,” Richie says using a Voice not quite his own but not defined really, just Not Him. It makes the skin on the back of his hands feel tight, the idea that Stan is attracted to him. Stan knows him, or knew him anyway, and that’s more than he can handle. 

“He hasn’t smelled you in twenty years, dumbass!” Eddie shouts, and Richie laughs a little desperately.

“Patty and I caught one of your specials a few years back and it wasn’t funny, but I couldn’t stop watching it. One day we were teasing each other and she said you could be my hall pass if she got one too.” Stan’s voice is rock solid if a little higher than his natural pitch. Richie looks away. Everyone is glancing between him and Stan and he feels like he’s drowning and being raked over hot coals. 

“This is insane,” Eddie says, crossing his arms over his chest. Richie feels hot behind his ears. It is insane. He’s Richie, he isn’t Mike or Ben or even Bill. He didn’t grow up hot. He had a couple of years in his late twenties where he thinks he might have been cute, but those days are long gone now. 

“Why is that insane?” Stan asks, his voice flint. He leans forward, blocking Richie from Eddie’s line of sight. 

Eddie doesn’t answer and Richie can’t see what he’s doing because Stan is still in his way. 

“Who is Patty’s?” Bev asks, filling the awkward silence. “Her hall pass,” she clarifies. 

“Oh,” Stan’s shoulders relax and he smiles. “Susan Sarandon.”

“So you’re both,” Bill asks, hand gesturing vaguely at Stan like he’s making some kind of sense. 

Stan must understand because he nods. “Queer? yes. My wife and I are happily and monogamously married and have been for nearly twenty years.” 

Richie claps his shoulder, maybe a little too hard, and says, “I’m wicked happy for you, bud.” He’s being sincere but it sounds off because he’s forgotten how to do that, if he’d ever really known it in the first place. 

“Thanks,” Stan says, and moves out from under his hand. 

“I am too,” Mike says. Richie looks over and he’s sitting up straight in his chair, looking over at them with warm eyes. Mike has the kindest eyes. “Queer, I mean. I’m gay.” 

“Me too,” Bill and Bev day at the same time. They chuckle and grin at each other. 

“You first,” says Bill, gesturing that she has the floor. 

“I am pansexual,” she tells them, heedless of the waitress who comes in with refills and leaves a pile of fortune cookies on the table. 

“I’m bi.” Bill says this with such ease, like it doesn’t cost anything to say. 

“What about you, hot stuff?” Mike asks Ben, who blushes. Richie wonders if everyone he loved as a kid is a little bit gay. He wonders if Eddie is a little bit gay. He wonders again, with his beer soaked brain, how strong Eddie’s marriage is. 

“I don’t like labels,” Ben says. Bev rolls her eyes fondly, in a way that says, I see you, I love you and not even a little judgemental. Ben turns an even brighter shade of red and tries to hide it behind his beer. Fuck, he’s cute. 

All eyes turn to Eddie, but he just sits with his arms crossed and his eyes trained on Stan. “Thanks for sharing your truth, guys,” he says but it doesn’t really sound like he means it. He shifts, clearly uncomfortable, and looks at Richie. He opens his mouth to say something else and that’s when all Hell breaks loose. 

** 

The house collapses and so does Richie, on the asphalt road outside of Neibolt. Pebbles dig into his thighs, but he can’t feel it. He can’t feel anything except overwhelming relief. Someone is laughing and someone else is crying and Richie falls onto his back. He stares up into the blue blue blue sky. 

The clown is gone. He blinks. 

“Hey, Richie?” Stan asks, and he doesn’t look away from the clear skies but motions with his hands for Stan to continue. “Was that a closet? Behind the _Very Scary_ door?” 

Richie says, resigned, “Yeah.” 

Stan laughs and so does Bev. Mike lets out a weird giggle and Richie can’t see him but he sounds almost embarrassed.

“Clown has jokes,” Richie says. His fingers dig into the grit of the road. 

“Had jokes,” Ben says. Richie closes his eyes against the bright sun and sees the red outline of his eyelids, veins threading his vision. 

It’s silent. Someone is still crying. Richie is surprised to discover that it’s him, that he’s the one crying. 

“Let’s go to the quarry,” Bev suggests. Her hand is on his shoulder. He hadn’t noticed her sit down next to him. When he looks over at her, she’s filthy. She’s covered in blood and dirt and pissy water. 

“Okay,” he agrees. He sits up and accepts Ben’s outstretched hand. He allows himself to be hauled upright. 

He walks behind Bill, who walks behind Mike. Stan is on his right and Eddie trails behind them. Bev is on his left and Ben is glued to her side. He keeps looking at her like she’s the blue blue sky and like she’s a person. Somehow, she is both. 

At the ledge, looking over the man made lake in the quarry, Richie watches Bev jump in. She doesn’t hesitate, she doesn’t look twice. Her hair is flaming bright in the sun. 

Richie looks back at Eddie, staring at his water logged shoes, and thinks he looks small. He looks like paper gone through the washing machine. Next to him Mike looks strong and sure and he jumps in after Bev. 

Mike hadn’t been there when they did this the first time. He was there every time after though. They made up for lost time. They’re going to make up for lost time. 

“Loogie contest?” Richie suggests to Eddie, who wrinkles his nose. He squares his shoulders, stands up straight, and makes a disgusting noise, pulling phlegm into the back of his throat. Richie crows with delight as he hocks his loogie over the drop off. 

Bill claps Eddie on the back before he follows his spit over the side and into the water. Eddie smiles, proud of himself, and Richie can’t look away from the dimples and the slit in his cheek Bev stitched up with her emergency sewing kit before they descended into the sewers. 

“See you guys down there,” Ben says, jumping after Bill and Bev and Mike. He dives in, eyes open. 

“I don’t want to go last,” Eddie says. He glances at the water, at their friends splashing and laughing. Mike is dunking Bill and Bev is on Ben’s shoulders. He hesitates.

“We’ll wait until you’re ready,” Stan tells him, not gentle, but rock solid. “Right, Richie?” 

Richie blinks. It was never an option that he wouldn’t. It’s inevitable. “Of course,” he says. 

Eddie looks at them and nods, like he wanted to know they wouldn’t leave him behind before he jumped. He’s so serious, all the time. Even when he’s kidding he’s dead serious. Serious as a heart attack, as cancer. Richie is glad some things stayed the same. 

Eddie raises his hand in a parody of a salute and his ring glints in the sun. He flings himself off the rocks. 

Richie watches him fall, watches him splash into the water below. He comes up sputtering, and Richie can’t hear what he’s saying exactly, but he’s saying it loudly and to no one in particular. 

“Richie,” Stan says, and he touches Richie’s face with one delicate hand. Stan grew up so soft looking, fine and long. His touch, like everything about him, is firm. 

“Yeah, bud?” Richie swallows hard. Stan has dirt everywhere, all over, and he wants to brush the filth off his chin with his thumb. 

“I’m going to kiss you,” Stan tells him. Richie blinks and nods. “Not right now, but later.” 

“Okay,” Richie says. He touches Stan’s hand on his face, slotting their fingers together. 

They jump into the lake together, Richie dropping faster and breaking the surface first. He stays under longer, until his lungs feel fit to burst, and when he comes up, Stan is treading water and watching him. Richie blushes, furiously red, and Stan smiles. 

Mike flicks water at Stan and pulls his attention away from Richie, who is glad for the reprieve. If he thought being under Stan’s gaze at the Chinese food place was bad, it had nothing on post-clown murder Stan’s watchful eyes. 

They were friends before Bill and before Eddie. He rinses his glasses off, careful of the crack in one of his lenses, and thinks about Stan as a kid, how composed he was all the time, how he grew into such a man, such a solid man. Richie feels like he’s made out of pulled taffy standing next to Stan. 

He remembers too, all of his childhood, in a way he hadn’t before they squeezed the life out of Pennywise. He remembers his first kiss (Jenny Alders at a boy-girl party Freshman year) and his first kiss that mattered (Stan, it was Stan, of course it was Stan) and he remembers the way he felt the day each one of the Losers left town until it was just him and Mikey left. 

He slides his glasses back on his face, hooking the legs behind his ears, and looks out at his friends. 

“I’m gay,” he says, because he doesn’t want to feel alone anymore. 

“Oh, that’s why it was a closet,” Bill says, smacking his hand to his forehead. “What an asshole.” 

“Hot take: Pennywise the demon clown from outer space who eats kids and terrorizes a town for centuries is an asshole.” Richie rolls his eyes, but smiles. He loves Bill, so much. He loves them all, so much. 

“I’m proud of you, honey,” Bev says. She swims over and lays her head on his shoulder, arms wrapped around him, hands clasped together on his hip. 

“You too,” he mumbles into her hair. He looks out and the other Losers are swimming in until they’re all hugging, they’re like a rat king, just limbs curled together until they are one living breathing entity with seven hearts. 

“Are we done with this? I need a shower,” Eddie complains. Richie feels Stan nod into the space between his shoulders where his forehead ended up. 

“Me too,” Mike agrees. Eddie is the first to pull away, followed by Bev, Stan, Bill, Ben, then Mike. Richie wipes at his face. He hadn’t realized he started crying again. When is he going to stop crying? 

They trudge back to the Townhouse, dripping and messy. Ben holds Bev’s hand. Bill stops in front of a shop window halfway into town and when Richie looks up, all of the Losers are looking at their reflections. He swears he sees himself from that summer, patterned shirt flapping in the breeze. He was so small and pale, glasses taking up so much of his buck toothed face. He wished he could tell that boy to be good to himself, but he knows he wouldn’t listen. He catches Bev’s eye and nods. She tugs on Ben’s hand and they’re off again. 

Stan bumps his shoulder and Richie glances down at him. He has his hand turned out, waiting. He raises his eyebrow, and Richie takes his hand. Their fingers are laced and they walk like that through Derry. Richie’s heart is in his throat. He can’t look anywhere except ahead, forward. He’s moving forward. 

In the Townhouse, there’s blood on the wall, on the banister, and on the steps. They all ignore it and stomp up the stairs. Stan pulls their hands apart and pushes Richie forward with a hand on his lower back. 

“Mike can take my room,” Stan says. Before anyone can say anything else, he’s walking down the hallway, passing his room, Bill’s room, Ben’s room. He slips into Richie’s, leaving the door open. 

“Um,” Eddie breaks the awkward silence, hands on his hips. “He’s married?”

Richie blushes again, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He bites his lips. 

Down the hallway, from Richie’s room, they hear Stan say, “Babylove, hey.” They hear him say, “I’m okay. I love you.” They hear him say, “Richie Tozier is here.” They hear him say, “I’m not kidding.” They hear him say, “If you’re sure.” And finally they hear him say, “Rich, come get in the shower.” 

“I’m just gunna,” Richie shrugs and points down the hallway with his elbow, hands sweating in the pockets of his damp jeans. “Bye!” 

He spins on his heel and walks on the skinny hallway rug, shoulders up by his bright red ears. He hasn’t blushed so much in decades. He hasn’t really felt like this in decades. 

Behind him he hears Eddie whisper in a way that’s more of a shout than a whisper, harsh and with an edge, “Stan is going to have an affair? With _Richie?_ ” 

“Is it an affair if he called his wife first?” Mike asks, his tone reasonable but curious. 

Bill says, “No,” the same time Eddie shouts, “Yes!” 

Richie passes through the doorway into his room and closes the door behind him, pulling the old wood gently. He leans his forehead against the grain, hands on either side of the frame. 

“I know it seemed like I only want you for your body, back at the restaurant,” Stan says. He sounds close, but not close enough to touch. “That was before I remembered everything. Before we—”

“Killed It? Yeah,” Richie sighs, fingers clenching around the frame. There’s grim under his fingernails, between the folds of his knuckles. 

“I think I remembered loving you, when I didn’t remember anything.” 

“What about—?” Richie drops his arms and turns around. He can’t look at Stan, so he looks at his dirty pants. Fuck, they both need a shower. They need to get clean. Stan, fastidious Stan, must be miserable.

“I wasn’t in love with you, if that’s what you’re asking,” Stan says. “I just loved you so much and it never went anywhere, after I left.” 

Richie glances at Stan’s face, earnest and sincere. Richie has never been sincere in his life but he’s trying for Stan, for someone he loves so much. 

“Do you remember the day you left?” He asks, moving to shove his hands in his pockets. He stops himself and lets them hang awkwardly at his sides.

Stan nods. “I kissed you goodbye.” 

“I jerked off to that all the time before,” Richie sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Before I forgot you.” 

Stan makes a face but reaches out to take Richie’s hand away from his face. He holds it in both of his own and squeezes. “Take a shower,” he tells him. Richie nods and goes, grateful for a task, something simple he can do and do on his own. 

He scrubs the sewer, the lake, the shame off his body. He rinses and does it again. He does it a third time. He’s the cleanest he’s ever been in his life. He doesn’t want to put his clothes back on, when he climbs out of the shower, so he kicks them to the corner of the room. Looking around, he finds the hotel towels and wraps one around his waist. Stan is waiting for him, probably on the phone with his wife again. Stan is waiting for him so they can have sex, probably. He doesn’t worry about walking out in his towel. 

Steam billows out of the bathroom when Richie opens the door. He steps out, clutching the towel in shaky hands. He realizes he hasn’t eaten since the Jade. He’s so tired. 

They killed the clown. 

“It’s all yours,” Richie says, gesturing grandly to the empty bathroom. Stan doesn’t touch him when they pass but he looks Richie up and down, almost comedic in his obviousness. 

“It’s okay if you fall asleep,” he says before closing the bathroom door. Richie hears the shower start and lets out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. 

He looks down, at his body covered in bruises and cuts, at his sore feet. He sits down on the edge of the bed.

His bag, still zipped up from when he was trying to escape earlier, sits at the head of the bed. He drags it close to him, stretching his arm across the rumpled sheets. His sides ache and his ribs throb. Richie opens the bag slowly and takes out a pair of Daffy Duck boxers and a black tshirt. He puts them on, each leg through a hole, each arm, feeling like a victory. He flops back against the sheets, his feet still flat on the floor. He listens to the shower run. 

Richie closes his eyes. 

**

He wakes up hours later. 

Richie can feel the passed time, the air is thin with it and his head feels like it’s full of spun cotton. It’s dark outside, dark inside. The only light comes from the gap between the door and the floor. There’s a body sticking to his back where his shirt rode up in his sleep, and Richie freezes, terrified, before he remembers that Stan was in his room when he passed out. He relaxes his shoulders, feels the steady rise and fall of Stan’s chest against his skin. 

One of Stan’s arms is wrapped around Richie’s waist. He smells clean and sleepy, when Richie turns his face into Stan, his whole body rolling with it. He curls his arms into his chest, making a closed parentheses with their bodies. 

Richie closes his eyes, since he can’t see anything anyway, and let’s himself bask in touching another person, in being so close to someone. 

Stan shifts forward, pushing himself further into Richie’s space. He murmurs, “Awake?”

Richie nods, realizes Stan can’t see either, and says, “Yeah.” 

“Okay,” Stan says, sounding more awake than asleep. He leans forward and presses his face into Richie’s neck. Stan’s curls tickle his face. He brings a shaking hand up and touches them the way he’s wanted to since he saw Stan again, fingers threaded in the ringlets. It’s soft, softer than he thought it would be. 

“Is this okay?” Stan asks, his lips brushing Richie’s neck. He shivers. 

“Yeah,” Richie says. He sounds like a parrot, repeating the same word over and over again. He blinks at nothing, swallowing hard. 

“You’ll tell me if it’s not?” Stan pushes himself until he’s covering Richie’s body with his own, hands cupping his cheeks. 

“Yes,” Richie replies, for variety. He waits, heart beating so fast he knows Stan can feel it where their chests are pressed together. He waits he waits he waits and then finally, Stan presses down. He kisses Richie carefully, exactly. He kisses Richie like he did when they were young, that first time. He kisses Richie like he’s worth being kissed. 

He kisses Richie like he wants to be kissing Richie, and then he opens his mouth and bites Richie’s bottom lip between his teeth, one hand moving from his face to his hair and pulling at the same time. 

Richie is unmoored, groaning loudly into Stan’s open mouth. 

“Shhh,” he says. “I think everyone else is still sleeping.” 

“Okay,” Richie says. “Sorry.”

Stan grips his hair again, sending sharp pain through Richie’s overworked nerve endings. “Don’t apologize, baby. It’s okay,” he whispers into Richie’s cheek before he kisses it. 

Stan is covering his body with his smaller one, but somehow Richie feels enveloped, warm and held down. He’s being tied to a rock so he won’t float away. 

“Tell me what you like,” Stan says. Richie’s toes curl and he hesitantly brings his hands up to touch Stan’s back, his fingers sliding up Stan’s spine. He isn’t wearing a shirt. 

“I want—” Richie squeezes his eyes shut. He’s embarrassed, that he has wants and that someone is willing and ready to fulfill them. It’s easier not to ask, usually. It’s easier not to be a thing that wants; you can’t be disappointed if you don’t ask. He does what other people want, wants what they want. This is Stan though. Stan, who has never made him feel unwanted, even through all the sniping and the judgement. Richie takes a deep breath and says, “I want to be touched.” 

“Where?” Stan fires back, quick as ever. He rubs Richie’s scalp with one hand and moves the other to his soft middle, pressing into his sides with strong fingers. He slides his whole hand under Richie’s tshirt. 

“I didn’t get that far,” Richie confesses. Stan kisses his cheek again, moving his mouth across Richie’s face until their lips brush. Stan pecks him on the lips once and then twice before he commits to a kiss, hard and slow like an old Hollywood smooch. 

“That’s okay,” Stan says when he pulls back. 

It’s so dark, it’s pitch black. Richie feels Stan’s hand on his chest, pinky almost touching his nipple. He moves his fingers and Richie can’t tell what Stan is doing until he has his left nipple caught between his index and middle fingers. “Here?” Stan asks, voice a little breathless. 

“Yeah,” Richie says on a hard exhale. Stan’s fingers are feather light and then firm in an indiscernible rhythm. Richie bucks his hips, his back arching under Stan. “Yeah, more.” 

“More?” Stan laughs. He kisses Richie again, sweeping his tongue across Richie’s lips and over his tongue, sending shivers down the length of his spine. If Stan doesn’t touch him, if he doesn’t touch himself, he will implode. 

Stan pinches his fingers together, hard and then lighter, steady. Richie jerks, his hands gripping Stan’s back uselessly, unable to find real purchase. He blindly reaches up and puts a hand in Stan’s hair, tugging on it. 

For the first time, Stan’s concentration seems to slip and he moans, low in his throat. Richie can feel the vibrations where they’re pressed together still. Richie takes his other hand and moves it between their bodies, touches himself through his boxers for some relief, any relief. It’s unbearable, Stan’s hot skin, his soft hair. The way he is so Stan about this, even with his tongue in Richie’s mouth. 

“Don’t,” Stan says, pulling his body away. Immediately, Richie takes his hand off his own cock and moves the other off of Stan’s head. He’s breathing hard, panting, panic feeling prickling his skin.

Stan is breathing hard too, his heavy breaths filling the new space between them. 

“Sorry,” he says. “Sorry, I meant, don’t touch yourself. I’m going to touch you. Trust that I’m going to take care of you.” 

Richie wishes he could see Stan, is so glad that Stan can’t see him. Something warm and cold, like IcyHot, burrows into his chest and radiates down his arms, his legs, pools in his groin. 

Stan presses his fingers into Richie’s sides and asks, “Okay?” 

“Yeah,” Richie replies. “Yeah, okay.” 

He swallows around a lump in his throat, feeling physically exhausted already. He woke up held and is being held through arguably the strangest sexual experience of his life. Richie is overwhelmed and he feels the tears building behind his eyes, no surprise sobbing this time. He punches the bridge of his nose to ward them off. 

“Here, come here,” Stan instructs, pulling on Richie’s arm. “I’m going to sit against the headboard. You sit between my legs, back to. Okay?” 

Richie shivers and moves to give Stan room. He hears rustling, feels Stan reposition himself behind Richie. In the dark, Stan rests his hand gently on Richie’s shoulder and pulls him back, nestling his back against Stan’s chest. 

Impossibly large in Stan’s lap, Richie shifts. He doesn’t know where to put his hands and almost sighs in relief when Stan takes one in each of his own and tucks them under his thighs. He’s wearing underwear, feels like the flimsy boxers Richie had packed away in his travel bag. Stan is probably wearing his underwear. It makes his blood run hot in his veins that Stan is wearing his clothes, that he took them without asking and just put them on his body like they belong to him too. Richie belongs to Stan and Stan belongs to Richie. His stomach flutters, literally, muscles jumping at the thought. 

“Don’t touch,” Stan tells him. Richie nods, sucking in a hard lung full of air when Stan wraps one delicate hand around his cock. 

“Fuck!” Richie breathes, legs pulling closer to his body involuntarily. Stan kisses his neck, bites at the skin there with blunt, human teeth, almost like a reward. 

Stan’s other hand makes its way to Richie’s mouth, covering his lips. Richie expects him to tell him to be quiet or maybe to leave his hand there until they’re done, but instead Stan says, “Spit,” and then pulls his hand back far enough for Richie to do as he’s told. 

When Stan feels like he has enough, he takes his spit covered hand and uses it to jack Richie’s cock. Their angles and positions made it hard for Richie to project his saliva and there’s spit all over his mouth, running down his chin. He moves to wipe it off, but Stan catches his hand, hard. He moves Richie’s hand back under his leg. 

“What do you need?” He demands, punctuating with a squeeze to the base of Richie’s cock. Richie’s hips thrust up and on their way back down he feels Stan, hard against the small of his back. He groans. 

“I—” Richie falters. It’s embarrassing that there’s spit on his face. It’s embarrassing that he can’t just clean it off. He can, he thinks, if he really wants to. Stan would back off, if he wanted him to. Something a little sick churns in his gut, sends a fresh wave of want through his body. His fingers twitch, under Stan’s thighs. 

“There’s, ah. There’s spit on my chin?” Richie says, ears burning. 

“Okay,” Stan says. He sounds sympathetic. “Turn your head to the left.” 

Richie does, as far as he can before his body protests. He doesn’t expect Stan to lick it off, but he does. He licks Richie’s face clean, and then he licks into Richie’s mouth. The hand on his cock moves slowly, methodically. Richie thrusts up, he can’t help it, and Stan lets him. 

Stan pulls back, away from Richie’s face, and Richie tips his head back until he’s using Stan’s shoulder as a head rest. 

“Take what you need,” Stan says, gathering the pre-come leaking out of Richie’s hard hard hard cock. He sets his hand in a loose fist just under the head. He doesn’t move. Richie catches on, though his spiderwebbed, lust soaked brain, and thrusts up into Stan’s fist.

He does it again and again and again, shaking the bed with it. The springs creak and groan and so do Richie’s bones. He has his feet planted on the bed, trying to get better leverage, but he slips, often, crashing back into Stan. 

“That’s it, baby,” He whispers into Richie’s neck, kissing and sucking on the skin there between hard bites that leave Richie feeling insane. He feels certifiable. Then Stan says, “You’re doing so good,” and Richie can’t help the full body shudder that forces its way out. He whimpers, pathetically, and Stan kisses his neck again.

Richie jack rabbits into Stan’s hand, sloppy and wet, squelching sounds echoing through the room in sync with their labored breathing. He feels ridiculous and too big, chasing the end like this. He slips more often, the closer he gets to the finish, and it only makes him more frantic. He doesn’t know if he can, with Stan’s hand as loosely wrapped around his cock as it is. 

Just when he thinks he’ll never see the end, when he’s frantic and whining like a tea kettle, Stan squeezes and pumps down hard, once. 

Richie comes, all the air punched out of his lungs. He cries out, or tries to anyway. His voice is gone, he opens his mouth and nothing comes out. He shakes, and Stan works him through it with one hand on his cock and the other arm wrapped around his body, holding him. 

When he’s done coming but not done shaking, Stan pushes his body, turning him and pulling him down until they are laying together. Both of Stan’s arms are wrapped fully around Richie, both of his legs too. He holds him while he cries, full hiccuping sobs that wrack his body and he feels a little fucked up about how good it is. 

“Fuck, Stan,” Richie cries. He buries his face in Stan’s chest, the fine hairs there tickling his nose, pressing into his cheeks. 

“Yeah, Richie?” Stan says, rubbing his shoulders. 

“I want you to come,” he says, still frantic. His fingers are curled on Stan’s breast, breath ghosting over his nipple. “You asked me what I want and I want you to come.” 

Stan runs a hand through Richie’s sweaty hair, thumb pressing behind his ear. “Okay,” he says, like he’s giving something to Richie and not the other way around. 

He sits up, and Richie goes with him. The sky outside his window is lighter now than it was when they started, painted dark and light blue instead of inky. It’s still too dark to see Stan, really, though now he can see the shape of his body next to him. 

“Can you kneel on the floor, or will it hurt your knees?” Stan asks. He’s touching Richie’s shoulders, his neck, rubbing the places that went numb while he was fucking Stan’s fist. 

“I can,” Richie says, and slides to the floor without being asked. He blushes when Stan’s fingers find his cheeks, tracing the delicate bones of his face. He leans past Richie, stretching his body over the edge of the bed. Richie doesn’t realize until it’s too late that Stan has flicked on the light. Richie squints against the sudden brightness. 

“Fuck, look at you.” Stan moves his right hand down Richie’s face and cups his chin, lifting and tilting his head back and forth. He lets go and Richie looks down at himself. His blush deepens, spreading down his neck and over his chest. 

He’s covered in his battle wounds from yesterday, black and blue like the sky outside his window. His dick is still outside of his boxers, flaccid now and covered in his own come. There’s come on his belly, sliding down into the waistband of his underwear. There’s come on the hair of his upper thighs. He isn’t wearing his glasses. He blinks up at Stan and feels the wet and dry tears on his cheeks. 

“Open your mouth,” Stan instructs, pulling his own cock free from Richie’s boxers. He’s wearing the ones covered in small, smiling tacos. 

Richie can’t laugh at the sight of Stan in his ridiculous underwear because he’s doing what he was told and sitting with his mouth open, waiting while Stan touches himself. Her jerks himself rough and hard, eyes roaming all over Richie’s face and shoulders and at the hands Richie has resting on his own thighs. 

Stan comes just when Richie’s jaw starts to hurt from being held open for so long. He hooks the fingers of his left hand in Richie’s open mouth and uses them to pull his face closer. He rests the head of his cock on Richie’s cheek and comes over his jaw, his chin, his lips, sucking in sharp lungfuls of air. 

When Stan finishes, he’s breathing heavily. He tucks himself back into Richie’s boxers before reaching down and doing the same for Richie. The gesture is so unexpectedly kind that Richie feels tears bubble back up and leak out of the corners of his eyes. He reaches up to wipe them away, but Stan stops him, grips his wrist firmly in his smaller hands. 

“Let me look?” He asks, and Richie knows again that he can say no, but he doesn’t. Instead, he cries and he feels the tears slide down his face. Stan’s come drips down his chin and onto his own chest. 

“Thank you, baby,” Stan whispers. He rubs his thumbs through Richie’s tears. He reaches down and pulls Richie’s shirt off, using it to clean the come off his face and his legs. He stands and holds his hand out for Richie to take, hauling him up off the ground. His knees crack on the ascent. 

Stan leaves him standing in the middle of the room, ducking into the bathroom. He returns with an intensely white wash cloth in one hand and a plastic cup of water in the other. He sets the water down on the side table next to the bed. 

“Head down,” he says. Richie tips his head down so Stan can wipe at his face with the cloth, cleaning off the grime his tshirt couldn’t. The roil in his gut over being cleaned up like this, of being directed for his own good, of being taken care of, is somehow worse now in the light of the hotel lamp than it had been when Stan licked the spit off his chin. How is this more embarrassing? It feels so good.

When he’s done, Stan sets the hand towel down on top of Richie’s come shirt draped over the chair in the corner of the room. He digs through Richie’s travel bag for another pair of underwear. He looks away while Richie changes, even though his hands have been every place that matters. He loves him for that, for the illusion of privacy. 

Richie tosses his soiled shorts on top of the growing pile on the back of the chair. Stan turns back around and hands him another tshirt to wear. 

“Drink this,” he says. Stan hands him the cup of water, watching him drink the whole thing down. He leaves the empty cup next to the lamp. He holds his arms uselessly against his sides. 

Stan steps up and wraps himself around Richie’s neck. Dazed and still a little light headed, Richie clutches at Stan’s back. He buries his face in Stan’s neck. 

“Thank you,” Stan mumbles into Richie’s shoulder. He rubs circles over his spine. 

Richie isn’t sure exactly what Stan is thanking him for. He’s the one who did all the work. He made Richie feel held and wanted and useful and used up. He did all of that for Richie, and all Richie did was sit there with his mouth open. 

He says as much to Stan, cradling the back of his head, fingers slotted in his curls. Stan buries his nose into the skin of Richie’s neck and kisses the hollow of his throat. 

“What are you talking about?” His lips press into Richie’s skin when he says, “You let me.” 

Oh. 

** 

They don’t go back to bed. Instead, they get dressed, Stan wearing one of Richie’s shirts and his own pants that he snuck into his room to retrieve. They wander downstairs, noting that someone has cleaned up the blood. 

Bill is up, sitting at the bar with his laptop. Eddie, Mike, Ben and Bev are nowhere to be seen. 

“Starting early, huh?” Richie jokes, and Bill laughs. 

“I figured out the ending of my movie,” he tells them with a bright smile. 

“I didn’t realize that was a problem you were having,” Stan says. “Good for you.” 

“Thanks, man.” Bill taps the plastic of his laptop lid, looking at them over the wire rims of his reading glasses. 

“Let’s not talk about it?” Richie suggests, gesturing between Stan and Bill. They both look at him, unimpressed. 

“I wasn’t going to bring it up,” Bill says. “But if you want to talk about it?”

Richie shakes his head, hands shoved as far into his jeans pockets as they’ll go. “Nope!” He shouts. 

Stan laughs, walking around Richie’s larger frame and moving to sit next to Bill at the bar. 

“Is there coffee anywhere?” He glances around the bar. Bill shakes his head. 

“I’ll go get some,” Richie rushes to offer. He needs to get out of here, he needs to breathe. Something about being with them when they know him, really know him, that’s making him feel itchy under his collar. 

“I think there’s a Dunkin’ down the street,” Bill tells him, turning back to his laptop. Stan looks over his shoulder, reading what he has written. 

Richie shrugs his shoulders up to his ears and ducks his head. He turns to leave, anxious to get outside and spend the money in his wallet on coffee and maybe donuts, when Bill shouts after him, “Love you!” 

Richie tenses, shoulders pressed firmly against his ears now. He squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself to relax. 

“Love you, too,” he says, quickly, and then bolts out of the Townhouse. 

When he returns, carrying a bag full of individual sugars and creamers balanced on top of a box of a dozen random donuts, a stack of paper cups, and one of those cardboard containers of coffee for large gatherings, everyone is awake and in the bar. 

Richie wonders if anyone at all works at the Townhouse. He wonders if they’ll mind that he’s brought half of a Dunkin Donuts with him and set it up on a table in the corner. 

“Hey, Rich!” Ben greets, waving and smiling at Richie with his beautiful, goateed face. 

“Benny boy! How’d you sleep?” Richie asks, dumping the sugars and the creamers on the table with the cups, next to the coffee. 

“About as well as you did, I think,” Bev says for him, leaning into his space. Ben flushes bright red and so does Richie. 

“Who wants donuts?!” Richie yells, motioning dramatically to the box on the table. He opens the lid with a flourish and smiles when he sees Bev’s grin of genuine delight. 

“I haven’t had one of these in so long!” She says, laughing. Bev slides off the bar stool next to Ben and grabs a chocolate one from the box. She bites directly into the side, white teeth flashing. 

“Coffee?” Richie asks Stan, who nods. He watches Stan walk over to the table, bend down, and fill an orange paper cup with acidic smelling coffee. He drinks it black, blowing over the top before bringing it carefully to his lips. 

“Thanks, Richie,” Mike says around a mouthful of powdered sugar. 

“Yeah, thanks,” Bill agrees. He doesn’t look up from his computer, but someone has handed him a plain, unglazed donut.

They’re all settled in this room, Bev and Bill and Ben at the bar, Mike in the chair by the door, Stan at the table holding their breakfast, and Eddie leaning against the wall closest to Mike. Richie feels a pull, a draw, and falls into the empty spot on the wall between Mike and Eddie. 

Richie looks at Mike and at Bill, at Stan and Bev and Ben and they’re all queer like him. Maybe not just like him, only Mike is gay, but they all found each other and they love each other so much. He loves them so much. Richie glances down at Mike and says, “Mike, you’re gay.”

Mike blinks up at him, powdered sugar on his lips. “Yeah,” he says, apprehensive. 

“Who was your first crush?” Richie asks, because he’s curious. He grins rakishly. 

“Why, do you want it to have been you?” Mike asks, teasing. Giving back as good as he gets. “Not enough that you had Stan, you want me too?” 

Richie opens his mouth to respond when Stan interrupts, incredulous, “He was not my first crush. My first crush was Penny Berkmann from temple.” 

“I’m gutted, Stan.” Richie wipes a fake tear from his eye and Stan rolls his. 

“It was Eddie, actually,” Mike says, and Richie is too busy processing that to respond. 

Bev does it for him though and says, “Eddie Kaspbrak? This Eddie?” 

They all turn and look at the man in question, who has gone red behind his freckles. He’s looking at the ceiling, at the floor, out the windows.

“Yeah,” Mike says. He wipes the powder off his mouth with a paper napkin. “I thought his fanny packs were cute. I thought your fanny packs were cute.” He says the last part to Eddie directly, even though he still won’t look at any of them. 

Richie takes this in and internalizes it. Maybe he and Mike are more alike than he thought. 

“Mine was Bev,” Ben says. Bev smiles at him and he smiles back. They are sappy and cute and in love and Richie expects to feel ire but only finds joy. Joy for them, joy because of them. 

Bill looks over from his laptop and says, “Same.” He turns in his chair until he’s facing Bev and continues, “I’m sorry I kissed you before. Everything was just,” he falters. She doesn’t say that Bill was her first crush, but they all know it anyway. 

Bev’s eyes are sad and so, so full when she says, “It’s been an extremely weird couple of days, Bill. It’s okay.” 

“I’ll say,” Eddie mutters, glancing pointedly between Richie and Stan. 

Richie doesn’t know why he and Stan bumping uglies tenderly in the early morning hours somehow ranks higher on the weirdness scale for Eddie than getting stabbed or killing the literal manifestation of their deepest fears. He does know why he wants Eddie to fixate on it though.

“I’m not touching that,” Mike says as Bill blows out a heavy sigh, eyes bugging out at the bar counter. 

“Anyway,” Ben interrupts. He points at Richie. “Who was yours?”

“Oh mine?” Richie asks, placing a hand on his own chest, over his heart. “Mien?” He continues, hamming it up, throwing on a horrendous French accent that’s bad on purpose. He revels in the giggles, the scrunched up faces. 

Suddenly, Richie goes very somber, face flat and serious, and answers, “Big Bill.” 

It’s not a lie. Before Eddie, during Eddie, there was Bill. He wanted all of Bill’s attention, his love, his time. He wanted all of their time, always. Now though, he knows they can share it. 

“Oh,” Bill breaths. “Thanks.” 

Richie laughs, delighted by the response. “You’re welcome, Small Bill.” 

“That’s rude,” Stan says. “But accurate.” 

“Hey!” Bill exclaims, but he’s laughing. 

“Eddie hasn’t gone yet,” Bev points out, gesturing to him with her second donut. Sprinkles fall and clatter on the bar. 

“I don’t remember,” he says. 

Stan’s mouth is pinched. He opens it to say something, but Richie butts in before he can and jokes, “That’s okay, keep your secrets.” 

Eddie glares at him, and at Bev, then at Mike, for some reason, before stalking across the room to make himself a cup of coffee.

Conversation falls away from the topic and they start talking about bright spots from their teen years, filling Bev in on things she missed after she left. 

They move chronologically, more of the losers being brought up to date as they move up the timeline until it’s just Richie and Mike telling stories of the summer when it was just them. They had spent most of it fucking around on the Hanlon farm. It might have been the only time in Richie’s life that he had muscle definition. They had both missed the other Losers like they were lost limbs.

Then Richie left and Mike had no one. He takes up the storytelling, spinning the tale of a lonely small town librarian, slipping further and further into a research spiral while he waited for the unthinkable. 

“Thank God for the internet, for Web 2.0, because otherwise keeping track of some of you would have been impossible,” Mike is saying. Eddie wanders back into Richie’s line of sight, carrying two cups with a donut balanced on top of one. 

“Here,” Eddie shoves the cup with a breakfast dessert as a hat at Richie, who catches it before it falls to the floor. The coffee has at least one creamer in it, he sees, when it slashes out and burns the back of his hand. He hisses, but doesn’t let go of the cup. He just licks the spilled coffee off his knuckles before taking a sip from the cup. 

“Thanks, man,” Richie says. Eddie doesn’t reply, won’t meet his eye. Instead, he stares raptly at Mike, who is explaining how distance learning worked in the early odds. 

Stan catches his eye and raises a brow in silent question. Richie shrugs. He doesn’t know. He has an idea, but it isn't fully formed in his mind yet. 

Richie glances over at Eddie, mid-laugh, and sees him wrinkle his nose in consternation at something Bill says to Stan. He looks good in the new day, his eyes bright and tracking them all, never missing a beat. 

He watches Eddie bring the cup of coffee he’s been resting against his crossed arms up to his lips. His ring is missing. 

“I missed you guys,” he says, apropos of nothing, interrupting an argument between Ben and Mike about something Bill said in the 11th grade. 

“Missed you too, dummy,” Eddie replies, bumping their shoulders together. His mouth is pressed together hard and Richie wants to pinch his cheeks, so he does. He comes after him with sticky donut glazed fingers while Eddie tries and fails to slap his hand away. 

“Fuck off, asshole!” He yells, but he’s laughing. Richie giggles and when he gets Eddie’s cheek between his pointer and thumb he wiggles them, cooing. 

When Richie looks up, all of his friends are looking and laughing and it feels so good, organic. Sunlight streams in through thin windows and makes his family shine. Richie is so full. He didn’t know he could be this full. 

Richie looks over at Stan, who furrows his brows back at him. Feeling light, feeling airy, Richie winks. He winks at Stanley Uris, who loves him and who he loves in return. Stan’s ears burn pink, but he doesn’t look away. Richie grins, as big and as bright as he ever has. 

He’s buzzing.


End file.
